Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for covering many issues on the important point of ensuring that we contract out appropriately. Noble Lords have moved for deletion of the clauses, but I am taking many of the comments to be on ensuring that the system we are designing is fit for purpose. It ranges from the continuing desire of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to ensure that children are properly safeguarded to ensuring that the current workforce is not displaced or ill-treated, as expressed by my noble friend Lady Turner. There is also the general principle of ensuring that the system is robust and uses people appropriately. I will try to deal with some of the issues that have been raised rather than read the text of my brief. The concerns are specific. I take the point about the mundane tasks turning into something less than mundane. However, the search activities are straightforward. If someone is found, we want to ensure that the people carrying out the searches are able to deal with the individual. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will recognise, some of the young people in such circumstances could be extremely vulnerable. As I hope I spelt out well in Committee, we want to ensure that contractors have the proper safeguards in place, that they train their staff appropriately, that it is an individually based contract and so forth. The powers of the contractors are set out in Clause 40(7) and they are deliberately limited. I know that there is an issue surrounding the three-hour time limit because I have discussed the matter with some of our stakeholders in the past couple of days. When dealing with legislation, one tries to ensure that one has captured the widest spectrum of possible need. In this case, we want to ensure that we can hang on to people so that we can hand them over properly. However, when I have discussed the matter with officials, the expectation has always been that you would hand them over very quickly—much more quickly than three hours. The three hours is a maximum limit and the critical point in legislation is to be clear about the maximum limit. We would expect that to be extremely rare. However, it is possible—not because immigration officers are off-site having a cup of tea or whatever—that it may be extended. Let us say that, for example, a number of people have been found, that the officers are trying to move from person to person, and that other incidents may have taken place. There could be a range of circumstances in which that maximum of three hours is important, but it is there as a safeguard and we would expect it to be exceeded only in extremely rare circumstances. The current pilot schemes are different because the private contractors work only alongside immigration officers. Here we are setting up something different, which is why we have set it out this way and have been clear about the maximum time. I understand noble Lords’ need to ensure that the contractors are properly trained. They will have to provide the Immigration Service and the appointed monitors with access to the course material and the opportunity to attend the training they provide to ensure that there is high quality. I am happy to make that training document available to noble Lords, if they would find it of value. There is no difficulty with that whatever. Furthermore, the French police will check all those who are to work in the Calais port area, regardless of the nationality of the employee. All persons will be checked for the existence of a criminal record in France. These records contain all charges or other issues around sex offences. My noble friend Lady Turner has been particularly concerned about the PCS and has reiterated it again. My honourable friend Tony McNulty and senior managers of the Immigration Service have held meetings with the PCS. There is no intention to replace warranted staff with contractors. I put it this way: there will be no redundancies. Perhaps that will reassure my noble friend Lady Turner more completely than anything else I might say. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was rightly concerned that those who had a complaint would need to know to whom they could complain. At the time, they can complain to the Immigration Service officer in charge, the chief immigration officer, who will be required to refer the matter to the monitor. The noble Lord asked about PACE. We discussed this matter in correspondence. As the noble Lord knows, the application of PACE is neither a legal requirement nor, we believe, appropriate and there will be no alternative code. But the contractors will be provided with detailed operational instructions which in some respects will mirror a number of the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. For instance, all those detected will be advised in writing of the reason for their detention and the purpose of any search undertaken. Records will be kept. There will be significant safeguards within the proposed layers of scrutiny to ensure that those searching abide by the operational instructions provided by the immigration service. Because essentially the provisions of PACE are intended to protect the rights of those under investigation and facing arrest, the noble Lord will recognise that there are different circumstances, but I hope that I have given some assurances. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly focuses on the general question of children. I have talked with the noble Earl on a number of occasions. I accept that any child found in these circumstances will be among the most vulnerable we may ever find—a child who speaks no English and may not know where he is or why he is here and so on. I sought to spell this out in Committee. It is important that those who detain the child do so appropriately and properly. I have had good discussions with the Refugee Children’s Consortium, with which we shall continue to work to ensure that the provision is right. If a heartbeat is detected, I want those persons to move swiftly because that child could also be in trouble. There have been too many tragedies. It is not about getting somebody else to come in. I would want the people finding the heartbeat of the child or the adult to move swiftly to ensure that we got him out and that we held on to him. The noble Earl and I, and the Refugee Children’s Consortium, discussed ensuring that people are properly trained to hold on to young people in particular. They might run away because they do not know where they are and what is happening. It is important that they are held on to for their own safety. We are in discussions with the Children’s Commissioner. My ministerial colleagues have not yet met with the Children’s Commissioner, although that is no more than a diary issue. The meeting is being arranged and we await the outcome. I shall let the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, know about it. The Foreign Office has found the French equivalent—Défenseur des Enfants—and we seek to make contact in order to raise equivalent concerns with our French counterpart on those issues.